15 days...

...until the drama ends. I hope. I don't know exactly what the endgame is with this house I'm trying so desperately to own, but it's getting a little bit irritating. Here's today's chapter in the drama-saga that is this purchase. So I've been trying to get my lenders to get off their asses and mail me the loan contracts I've been bothering them about for more than a month. The ones they sent a month and a half ago were wrong, and I won't sign documents that are incorrect. (The kicker is that if I didn't have said documents signed and received by them this afternoon, I wouldn't be covered under their "close on time guarantee" which pays me a month's mortgage payment in the event that they fuck up and I can't close on time. Which, after dealing with them for this length of time, makes me pretty sure that I'll need to have that guarantee in writing ten feet tall.)

In the process, my underwriter says that they have "just" received the "first" appraisal for my house, and it appraised for $24,000 less than the sale price. I was floored. After some prying and fact-checking on their online website, I find that they had already received and approved a previous appraisal, and there was no record other than "some notes on a sticky note" that anyone had spoken to me about requesting a second appraisal. The underwriter just went ahead and ordered a second because the first one was a mere $3,000 below the sale price. Seems to me that $11,000 is a mighty big difference. Especially since this number represents the EXTRA money I'd have to bring to closing in order to get the mortgage from these guys.

Luckily, since I do have the proof on my side that the earlier appraisal was approved, and I have a great track record of obsessively calling and/or emailing when problems arise (meaning if they had contacted me about a problem with the first one, I would have sent a billion emails trying to solve the problem, and I probably would have called them about 10 times), I'm pretty sure they're going to retract the "second" appraisal. It doesn't look good on their part that I have an email calling the second one "first" and I have the website documented dates of the earlier acceptance. I made sure to print out a copy for my records.

So it doesn't look like at this point I'll have to change anything about the amount I have to bring to closing, but I'm not going to rest easy yet. It just gets irritating to have people asking questions and getting all excited on my behalf about a house that I cannot with any real certainty say is mine until I have the keys in my hands. I'm glad that people are excited, but I just wish I didn't have this drama. I sure as hell have enough made-up drama on my own without the real kind.

On a happier note, two of my great friends are one shower closer to getting married. I was really proud of Jess' and my ability to somehow, doublehandedly, pull off an entire shower. We had a lot of moody times, which I blame on the high-heels that go with our BM dresses, and that one occasion that I slammed on my brakes whilst following Jess to the park and ending up with the entire contents (read: dirt) of a large aloe vera plant poured across my front seat and onto my floorboards. We also had a lot of giggly times on account of I'm great at making up nonsense and it really does feel good to play in dirt, so long as it's not all over the inside of your car.

And then when we got there (it took us a good 15 minutes to find the pavillion), another group was usurping the pavillion, so I told them to clear out. Of course, it was a group of "special" people, and I felt guilty for about 10 minutes. Then Jess tried to decorate the large wooden sign with something to flag down drivers-by, only to have it ripped apart by little savages at a neighboring birthday party. So we screamed at them. I think the screaming was cathartic for us - everything went much better after that. The lesson here is to scream more often, particularly at small children. [The guardian of the birthday party had the kids come back and try to fix up the damage they had done to the sign - one of the little boys tried to offer me an Almond Joy as compensation.] Happily the expected guests arrived and the food cooked and there are some great pictures to remind us all of it.

A lot is going to be happening in the next two weeks, so I expect it will be a whirlwind of [hopefully] happy activity. My aunt and Gram are coming down on a train to Austin next week, so I'll get to pick them up and say hello and such (and I haven't seen them in almost two years...yikes.), before turning them over to my mom and dad who are hosting a chunk of our family. Then my brother's getting married to a beautiful girl in a little under two weeks. Followed by a day of paint and accessory shopping with my grand new housemates, and then the big turn-over-the-keys-MINE-MINE-MINE-ALL-MINE day. All within the space of 15 days.

I'm glad I like rollercoaster rides, but I sure as heck hope this one ends well.